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Oscars 2014: Why Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ became a phenomenon

Of all this year’s grabby Oscar nominees for Best Original Song, Frozen’s “Let It Go” is the one that simply refuses to . . . well . . . let go.

True, Pharrell Williams’s Despicable Me 2 contribution, “Happy,” is the bigger pop hit, having reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart, while U2 already has a Golden Globe win in the same category for “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. And Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ frontwoman Karen O and Her director Spike Jonze are definitely the hipsters in the mix with “The Moon Song.”

“Let It Go,” however, is a bona fide global phenomenon: the subject of innumerable online “covers,” a twice-charting hit in separate versions by Demi Lovato and Idina Menzel (who sang the song onscreen as troubled princess Elsa in Frozen) and an object of particularly deep-rooted obsession amongst young girls.

The Frozen soundtrack has moved more than a million copies, Menzel’s rendition of “Let It Go” crept into the Billboard Top 20 last week and even the sheet music for Menzel and Lovato’s versions sit at No. 1 and No. 4 on the download-sales chart at www.musicnotes.com . Even U2’s Bono recently conceded on The Tonight Show that “Let It Go” is probably an Oscar shoo-in on March 2.

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“We’ve won awards before and they’re great — it’s wonderful to win them — but way rarer is to be able to go online and be able to see every kid in the world singing your song,” says Robert Lopez, who co-wrote “Let It Go” with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. “Awards are given out every year, but that doesn’t happen all the time. So we already feel very, very blessed.”

The Lopezes, already established names thanks to their acclaimed work on the rather more satirical theatrical productions Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, are highly amused by the fact that “Let It Go” suddenly has them rubbing shoulders with rock stars on the charts and, occasionally, in person. Anderson-Lopez jokes that Bono mistook her for a publicist during a recent photo shoot with their fellow Oscar nominees for Billboard.

The couple, she laughs, worked “really hard, day and night, for two years” with Disney to rescue a movie that didn’t initially look that good on paper. It’s therefore very rewarding to see how their soundtrack — and “Let It Go,” in particular — has stuck a chord with so many people, especially girls of a certain age.

Disney obviously recognized the music’s popularity when it released an alternate “sing-along” cut of Frozen to theatres on Jan. 31, one which, unsurprisingly, has found much favour with the kiddie set.

“We found the sing-along to be quite popular with our younger guests,” confirms Michael Langdon, Cineplex Entertainment’s director of communications. “You’d routinely see children and parents singing along with the movie in the theatre.”

Anderson-Lopez has a theory about why “Let It Go” — which arrives Frozenduring a sequence in Frozen where Elsa decides to stop being ashamed of her “cryo-kinetic” powers and accept what makes her unique — has caught on so thoroughly.

“I think there’s something new about this Disney movie. It celebrates the tradition of the Disney-princess thing, but . . . there’s something more complicated about Elsa that’s tapping into the culture right now,” she says.

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“There are so many reasons that we all have fear and shame, and this particular, complicated Disney heroine has to kind of overcome that. I think people are responding to that, to this feeling of, like, I’m going to let my own unique power out and not live in fear of whatever it is I’m dealing with, whether it’s pressure to be a good girl and be beautiful and perfect and good grades, or if it’s something deeper. Everyone is bringing their own interpretation to this song and I’m glad about that.”

Annelise Forbes hasn’t analyzed it that deeply.

The 9-year-old from Hamilton has logged a whopping 620,000 YouTube views for her big-lunged cover of “Let It Go,” and was offered a chance to perform the song on TV during E! Entertainment’s pre-Oscar red carpet broadcast from Los Angeles this Sunday — sadly, she couldn’t get a work visa in time — and again in New York on The Rachael Ray Show a week later.

“I like it because it’s very big and powerful and, in the movie, the animation is really cool,” she says, adding that she and her little brother watched the clip on YouTube “about 100 times” after seeing Frozen. “Idina Menzel did a really good job singing it in the movie. I like the melody and I like the tune.”

The Lopezes’ own daughters aren’t immune to “Let It Go” fever, either, although the eldest of the two is apparently ready to move on now that the song is everywhere.

“The 4-year-old loves to sing ‘Let It Go’ all the time,” confirms Anderson-Lopez. “But the 8-year-old is like an early adopter of an indie band who’s a little bit like: ‘I discovered Depeche Mode. Who are all these people?’ She’s feeling a little bit like her secret has been co-opted by the masses.”

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